All of them are important, but the two that really jump out for me right now are agility and strategic communication. Because good things will happen, and bad things will happen, agility means you are pivoting, and you need to be able to pivot, especially in this day and age, where technology is ubiquitous, and it’s changing by the day. Agility — to change strategies, to change course, to change approach — is so important, and that goes along with resilience.
In terms of strategic communication, people need to know where you’re going, why you’re going there, and how you’re going to get there. What happens is, people set strategic goals, but they forget to set the strategy to get there. I will give you a great example. Someone said to me at National Grid, ‘We need to improve customer satisfaction.’ I said, ‘Okay, what’s our strategy for doing that? Because you can take multiple paths.’ And they said, ‘We just need to get there; all paths are open.’ So I said, ‘Cool, let’s just give them electricity and gas for free, and we’re going to get 100% customer satisfaction.’
That’s not a strategy we’re willing to pursue, right? So once again, it’s providing clarity on, where are we going, what’s acceptable to get there, and what isn’t? What are the paths?
